


playground games

by maketea



Series: the ways you said i love you [3]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Love Confessions, pre reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23218945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maketea/pseuds/maketea
Summary: ladybug has just as much luck at love confessions as marinette.(prompt 3 = a scream)
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: the ways you said i love you [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667194
Comments: 31
Kudos: 294





	playground games

She was going to tell him.

Eventually.

That was what Ladybug told herself when Chat Noir helped her ascend a gabled roof with both hands clasping hers and their eyes meeting in the starlight. And when she had her head in her hands and he listened to her, an arm around her shoulders, cry. And when he smiled at her. When he touched her knee. When he elbowed her playfully.

It was all playful before, wasn't it? Playful flirting, playful caresses, playful smirks. But there had been a shift in her heart that left no room for playground games anymore. 

Something told her he felt it, too.

"Marinette, it's only Chat Noir," Tikki said. "You can tell him everything. Just speak from the heart.”

Slumped over the beginnings of a love letter, Tikki at her side, and an ache in her chest, Marinette had a sense of dejà vu. 

“I know, I know, it’s just… I don’t want him to feel like a second choice.” She pushed back from her desk to face Tikki. “He’s so much more to me than that.”

“Then say that!” Tikki fluttered down and placed two tiny hands on Marinette’s index finger. “Speak from the heart!”

So she did. Marinette wrote a love letter — two double-sided pages, nothing crossed out, signed off with a Ladybug sticker she found in her stationery box, and stapled at the upper left corner. No more playground games. 

Chat Noir hadn’t realised the predicament he left her in by being late to their rendezvous, and Ladybug hadn’t realised the predicament she’d be in leaving ten minutes early. Ample time to rehearse sounded like a good idea when she was pacing up and down her room with a love letter in her hands, but she quickly came to learn that a superhero costume and a change of scenery did very little to tame jittery nerves.

On a rooftop at the seam of Paris, Ladybug paced up and down, a love letter in her hands, reading it out to herself.

She couldn’t even count down the minutes until he arrived, anymore, because he could have popped up at any second. And he loved to pop up like that, silencing his footsteps, prowling up to her, grabbing her shoulders so she’d jump five feet in the air and scold him.

If he did that to her now, with her nerves already on fire, Ladybug feared she’d  _ really  _ have a heart attack.

Ladybug went to gnaw at her fingernails, was met with the spandex of her costume, and settled with scrunching her grip into the letter.

She read it over and over again, scrutinised it, accidentally memorised the first paragraph in all of its imperfection.

_ Sometimes I look at you and forget how to talk because you’re just so  _ **_handsome_ ** _. _

If reading that made  _ her  _ want to throw herself off that building, what would  _ he _ think?

A solid weight dropped to the roof behind her, and though he wasn’t playing hide and seek with her tonight (a.k.a: hide and scare Ladybug), she still whipped around just as fast.

He rose from a crouch, silvered with moonlight, with a stiff brow.

“Everything okay, Ladybug? You sounded pretty rattled on the phone.”

She had never seen him so serious.

Which meant he was expecting her to be serious.

Ladybug glanced down at the letter.

_...you're just so  _ **_handsome._ **

Without hesitation, she crumpled it up.

His expression softened, but only because bemusement was gentler than business-mode.

"My Lady, what's—" 

"Nothing!" she cried, and hid the letter behind her back. "I, uh, thought I heard an akuma outside my house. False alarm! Haha, sorry."

"Ah, right. Well," he said, and extended his stick. "Need me for anything else?"

She shook her head vigorously. So quick she didn't notice how he smiled when he glanced at her hidden hands.

"Nope. You can go now. See ya." 

He chuckled. "Alright. See ya, Bugaboo."

And he was off.

She watched, burning with shame, stomach tangled. 

No more playground games, right? 

Then what was she  _ doing? _

Here she was dancing around a love confession, asking the boy she liked to meet her at a secret spot, before sending him away in the heat of embarrassment.

She scrunched up her mouth.

She would be mature.

Chat Noir was not as far as she had expected, but at the speed he was moving, she knew she couldn’t catch up so easily. 

Scrunched up letter in one hand, Ladybug cupped around her mouth, and yelled,  _ “Chat Noir!” _

He stopped on top of a chimney, and turned against the moonlight to search for her. 

Heat flooded her face once their eyes found one another’s. 

Maybe being mature just wasn’t Ladybug’s forte.

But it was too late to back down. She couldn’t wave him off a second time.

_ “I have to tell you something!” _

_ “What?”  _ he yelled back.

_ “I said, I have to tell you something!” _

_ “What is it?” _

And why she didn’t swing up to him while he was in one place, why she didn’t ask him back over, why she didn’t roll her eyes and save it for another day, Ladybug didn’t know.

Instead, she filled her lungs with a deep breath, and screamed,  _ “I love you!” _

A beat passed where Chat Noir stood dumb on top of the chimney. Heart in her throat, she squinted out the moonlight, but still couldn’t work out his expression. 

_ “What?”  _ he screamed back.

_ “I love—” _

From her peripheral vision, she watched a bedroom window flicker into light.

She coloured deeply. That was enough.

Ladybug pinched the bridge of her nose, then held out her hand.  _ “Stay there, I’ll come to you!” _

She swung herself off her rooftop and towards his chimney, equipped with her love letter.

(Funny how Ladybug seemed to forget the brilliance of a cat’s hearing.)


End file.
